Best of 2025: Suzanne Gordon
Providing the proper context for a story is one challenge not always met in journalism. Since publishing my first Prospect article on the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) ten years ago, I’ve tried to do more than just report the latest news (usually bad) on efforts to privatize the veterans health care system. With the help and support of wonderful in-house editors, the veterans affairs beat at this publication has become a place where, I hope, readers have found information, analysis, relevant history, and political perspectives unavailable elsewhere. All of which hopefully encouraged better informed organizational advocacy and activism by VA patients, their caregivers, federal labor unions, and veterans organizations.
A ‘Middle Finger’ to Vets
The Trump II era was ushered in at the VA with the Senate’s bipartisan confirmation of former Georgia Rep. Doug Collins as VA secretary. At the time, as my co-author (Steve Early) and I pointed out in this piece, putative defenders of the VA on Capitol Hill in the Democratic Party were most vocal about the threat to jobs and services posed by Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency.” We warned, accurately, that the considerable short-term damage done by Musk was less of a threat than the long-term impact of Collins, as a privatizer who would not be gone in a few months. We hate to say “I told you so,” but … Read the story.
The Illusion of Choice
This lengthy investigative report involved a Prospect-assisted deep dive into data from numerous sources about the availability of health care, in various forms, in all 50 states. Our mission was to provide a reality check on Republican claims that veterans—and all of us—live in a land of health care “freedom,” thanks to a medical marketplace that offers high-quality affordable care, quickly and anywhere. The detailed 50-state report that the Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute published showed what a fairy tale that is.
What we found—and confirmed with the help of some “secret shopping”—was that provider shortages, long waits for appointments, and health care deserts are often the rule, not the exception, particularly in rural America. These survey results have become the basis for not only reporting in the Prospect, but a series of newspaper op-ed pieces in states like Maine, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Nevada—all co-written with VA patients—that highlighted the relevant local findings. Read the story.
States Can Protect Public Health When the Feds Do Nothing
On the surface, this piece didn’t seem to be very VA-related. But it was a direct outgrowth of my research for a book about Dr. Kenneth Kizer’s impact on the VA. Kizer served as VA undersecretary for health in the 1990s, under Bill Clinton, and before that was a leader and public-health innovator in California state government, under a Republican governor. Kizer acted quickly to address the AIDS epidemic at a time when the Reagan administration in Washington was doing little or nothing to save lives. When Gavin Newsom announced his partnership with other state governors opposed to anti-vaxxer lunacy in Washington—and more recently hired ex-CDC staffers who quit or were fired under Trump—Sacramento was coming to the rescue, but not for the first time. Read the story.
Trump Is Coming for Veterans’ Disability Benefits
Again written with my husband Steve Early, this piece benefits from his experience, as a union activist and organizer, of the kind of non-VA workmen’s comp systems privatizers want to foist on veterans. It also takes aim at a really scuzzy series of articles published in The Washington Post, which takes bad reporting to new lows. I didn’t have space to totally dissect those articles, but the claims that vets are all fraudsters, and the way serious problems that many of my veteran friends and sources suffer from were dismissed, were infuriating. Read the story.
Another Mass Staffing Purge at the VA
This collaboration with former VA psychologist Russell Lemle, a co-founder of the Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute, ended the year like it started—with the latest news on VA staffing levels. Our assessment of the likely impact of Secretary Collins’s decision to leave between 26,000 and 37,000 jobs unfilled connected some dots other reports missed. These cuts are being implemented just as the VA is expanding the use of new, deeply flawed computerized medical records in 13 new sites. Some insiders believe Collins may return to Georgia soon to run for governor; if that’s the case, it won’t be soon enough—but any successor as VA secretary for the next three years is not likely to be much better. Read the story.
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